Brain damage, brain degenerative disease, and brain disorders generally have a significant impact on functions of the body. Common causes of brain damage include lesions, trauma, and stroke. Difficulty arises in treating such damage, disease, and disorders because neural tissue within the brain cannot regenerate.
Most tissue in the human body originates from undifferentiated cells known as stem cells. These fundamental building blocks differentiate into specific target parenchymal tissue based on hormonal and other local signals. Scientific evidence suggests that stem cells injected into a target tissue will differentiate into a cell line specific to the host tissue. This capability is of particular interest in treating conditions involving organs, such as the spinal cord, heart and brain that cannot regenerate.
Electric fields have been used to guide migration of many types of cells in the laboratory for over a century. Application of electrical stimulation for human and animal health, however, has not been very successful. A major obstacle has been intrinsic detrimental effects associated with direct current electric stimulation, which drastically outweigh the beneficial effects. The electric currents generate heat in the tissue, change pH within the tissue, and produce electrode products that are harmful for cells. Electrical stimulation is further complicated because human tissue is highly conductive, allowing for large current flow which significantly increase the detrimental effects to stimulated tissue. As a result, there are no commercially available devices for direct current brain stimulation at this time to regulate behaviors of neural stem cells and other types of cells in the brain.
In view of the drawbacks of previously known systems, it would be desirable to provide systems and methods for safe and effective direct current brain stimulation.